


The Fear of Falling Apart

by stormandstarlight



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (sort of), Angst with a Happy Ending, Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Selkie Jaskier | Dandelion, Selkies, in the sense that Jaskier is dyING but doesn't DIE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28415532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormandstarlight/pseuds/stormandstarlight
Summary: They say of the seal-maidens that they are beautiful beyond compare, that any man might fall in love and take one to wife. The songs say, to keep a selkie bound to hearth and home and away from the sea, you must find them on a full moon, when they have shed their sealskin cloaks, and hide it as deeply as you can.The songs also say, of course, that a selkie without the sea is as like to live as a human without a heart, and that without their skins they will pine away for want of the ocean.Not many seem to care.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 61
Kudos: 409





	1. Truth be Told I Never Was Yours

**Author's Note:**

> Selkiefiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiic!  
> This fic entirely took over my life for like three days; the idea and draft for it were come up with and written in about five hours. Big big thank yous to [handwrittenhello](https://archiveofourown.org/users/handwrittenhello/pseuds/handwrittenhello) for being a wonderful beta and to [ruffboi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruffboi/pseuds/ruffboi) for letting me scream at them about everything to do with selkie!Jaskier.  
> For the full listening experience, these four songs are what I listened to the most while writing this, in order from most to least: [This Is Gospel (Piano Version)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO2_3pVd5k0) by Panic! at the Disco, [A Mhagdean Bhan Uasal (Noble Maiden Fair)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqOmlipOGe0) from the Brave soundtrack, [Eilean Uibhist mo Ruin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HbfG9tAGCA) sung by Julie Fowlis, and [A' Phiuthrag 'sa Phiuthar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0LHiKaBJY), also sung by Julie Fowlis.

“Do you know, Geralt, I’ve never actually been to the coast,” Jaskier says, with a pluck on his lute to emphasize _never_ , and skips up to walk side by side with him. They’ve been travelling together for four years now, and as much as Geralt hates to admit it, the bard’s… grown on him. Significantly so.

“Hm.”

“Oh, oh really, that’s _so_ hard to believe. Just because _you’ve_ been all over the Continent in your -- how old are you? Doesn’t matter. _Most_ people never leave their home country, you know, and _I’ve_ been to… three? Four? More than that.”

“But you’ve never seen the coast.”

“Never got around to it, really. Things to do, places to go, people to see.” Jaskier flips a hand carelessly through the air, spins on his heel, grins up at Geralt. He has to suppress a smile in return, and resolutely turns his face to the road.

“What people?”

“ _Y_ _ou_ , for instance, and it’s not like _you_ go that way either.”

“We’re going ‘that way’ right now.” It’s almost fonder than he means it, except he _does_ mean it.

“Exactly my point!” 

“What point?”

Jaskier splutters, coughs, and changes the subject. “Oh, very funny, yes. My _point_ is that not a lot of people get to see the coast--”

“Except the ones who live there.”

“ _Except_ the ones who live there, thank you, Geralt, of whom I _am not one_ , and so this will be my first time--” and they crest the hill and Jaskier lets out a very small _oh_ and goes silent.

Geralt glances over at him, but he’s staring off over the rooftops of the village they’re about to walk into, at the shimmering silver band of the sea stretching off into the horizon, with an expression on his face almost like he’s in pain, and then he’s scrambling down the road again, strides far too long for safety as he half-runs, half-falls towards the beach.

Geralt smiles fondly at him and leads Roach at a more sedate pace down the switchbacks of the road, watching Jaskier’s blue figure dart and scramble into the town and slow but not stop.

Not stop even when he passes through the market and disappears into the crowd, leaving a path of disgruntled fishwives behind him, shoving his way through the crowd with an abandon that’s so entirely unlike _Jaskier_ that Geralt has to check to make sure it’s really him and not someone else doing it from his vantage point on the hill.

Something’s wrong.

He clicks to Roach and leads her at a fast walk, but even at the fastest pace she can safely sustain down the hill, Jaskier’s far ahead of them and gone by the time they reach the town. He pushes through the crowds, ignoring the spits and hisses, and follows Jaskier’s scent to the beach, where he’s wandering down the dunes like a man enthralled, skidding on the sand and not appearing to care or even notice.

Something’s _very_ wrong.

He drops Roach’s reins and sets off at a run over the shifting sands, while the waves crash and boom and Jaskier moves with all the dreamlike confidence of a sleepwalker, uncaring. The sand hardens and dampens under his feet and Jaskier steps out into the waves, heedless of the cold; surely he’ll stop, surely, _surely_ , but he _doesn’t_ , splashing out into the waves--

Geralt mentally writes his boots off as needing to be replaced anyway and lunges out after him into knee-deep and then hip-deep and then waist-deep water, reaching, desperate -- he’ll _drown_ , what’s going _on_ \-- and catches his shoulder in the gap between one wave and the next.

Jaskier _fights_ him, a twisting struggle that forces Geralt to pull the bard close and safe against his chest, and then goes limp and panting all of a sudden, clinging to his armor straps with surprising force. “Geralt?”

“I’m here.”

“What…” He gulps, swallows, and blinks at the sea, silver-shining in the midsummer sunlight. “Geralt, what _happened_?”

“I don’t know.” It can’t be sirens; he’d know if it were, or Roach would, or there’d be carcasses, nests, _something_ around. Instead there’s just the pebbled beach and the rolling crash of the waves, almost like a drumbeat, and the dreamlike way Jaskier walked through the water, as though he’d walk until it closed over his head and carried him down to the lightless deeps.

Until he _drowned_.

 _No_.

Geralt wraps his arms tighter around Jaskier’s waist and holds him close, even as he begins to _shake_ , bone-deep shivering that doesn’t seem to be from the cold.

Geralt tugs him out of the water, slow and gentle, and he comes, reluctantly. The water doesn’t want to let him go, and he’s still shivering when they make it safe onto dry land, huge wracking spasms that look like they _hurt_. His skin is moon-pale, almost luminous, and he doesn’t seem able to speak.

Geralt guides him up the dunes and into the brush and out of sight of the sea, carefully dresses him in dry clothes, and makes camp. In the middle of the day, in a horribly indefensible location, but there’s _something_ wrong with Jaskier and he doesn’t know what. 

He holds the bard close against his chest until he eases, gasping out a harsh rhythm against Geralt’s collarbones, and he _should_ find a way to fix this, he _should_ , but all he can do is fist his hands in Jaskier’s doublet and hold him tight against the pull of the waves, as if they can drag him away even now. 

* * *

The next morning, when he wakes again to the crash of the waves, Jaskier is already up and setting the fire for breakfast. That eerie paleness from before is gone, replaced by his usual healthy tan, and he seems perfectly cheerful. Or, well. As cheerful as Jaskier ever is in the morning. Perhaps “normal” would be a better word, because he complains about the cold and complains about the sand and complains about losing his boots to saltwater, doesn’t bother to shut up about his latest song while he’s eating, and then complains about Geralt taking too long to tack up Roach so they can “ _go_ , Geralt, I want to make it to the next town over before midnight, thank you.”

That day’s travel is the same as ever, and the next, and the next. Geralt moves from fishing village to fishing village, taking contracts on sirens and kelpies and the occasional lost drowner, while Jaskier sings in taverns and writes more songs and makes a general nuisance of himself. It’s as if nothing ever happened that first day, and for a while -- for a long time, all the way up the coast of Cintra towards Kerack -- everything is almost fine.

Almost.

When they camp, Jaskier will sit by the fire and stare into it for hours, or lie on his back unmoving and watch the sky, or wander towards the ocean -- never towards it, but he’ll stand at the top of the beach and watch the waves roll and roll, and when Geralt comes to bring him back he won’t say a word. And he doesn’t sleep. Geralt hadn’t noticed until they’d spent a rare night in an inn -- it’s not a common fishing village that has space for travelers, much less a witcher -- curled up back-to-back in the single bed left, and Jaskier’s breathing never evened out into sleep proper until _long_ after it had already taken Geralt.

And when he does sleep, it’s restless, uneasy, tossing and turning until his blankets are a snarl or he wakes Geralt with a careless elbow. He doesn’t eat properly, either, a nibble here, a bite there. It lends an odd clarity to his face, like light burning through him from the outside, but Geralt knows it for the warning sign it is. It’s like he’s pining away after some new lover, but as far as Geralt knows, there _is_ no new lover.

And the sea.

Always the sea.

Jaskier never seems to stop longing after it, though he never runs blind into the water again, a longing like the pull of the moon to the tides, as endless and as inevitable. He walks along the strand barefoot, water rushing over his feet with every step, and doesn’t seem to care, not even when the wind whips the water into a froth, bitter cold and biting and Geralt has to pull him away before the frozen water can soak him to the bone.

When they come to a decent port town that has a mage, he makes a few discreet inquiries, and she agrees to look at Jaskier, to break whatever curse or melancholy or strange spell has been laid over him. She barely makes it through the door, however, when she starts shaking her head. 

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

“I’ll pay whatever you ask,” Geralt says, half-desperate, and she just laughs.

“It’s not a matter of _pay_ , witcher, I mean I _cannot_ cure your lover, not for any price in the world.”

“Is there anyone who _can_?” Geralt asks, sharper than he means to, and more plaintive than he _should_ , but Jaskier is sitting silent at the desk like something that was lost a long time ago, and he looks as though he might simply fade away into nothingness when Geralt isn’t looking

“No,” she says, strong and sharp, and then tugs him out into the hallway. Her voice is sorrowful, but not overly so; a practiced pitch. “He’s a _geas_ on him, a strong one. I don’t know if it’s a true fate or a laid one, but if unfulfilled it will go with him to his grave.”

 _Geasa_ , fated ends. A soul bound to an artificial destiny, pulling it forever towards its end. Unending and unbreakable. Forever.

The mage smiles at him, soft and sorrowful, and presses the coin he gave her for a consultation back into his hand. “Keep him close. You don’t have long.”

Geralt bares his teeth at her, doesn’t take the coin, and storms into the room, nails already digging into the meat of his palms like claws. Jaskier looks up, eyes fever-bright and storm-breaker-blue, and then makes a muffled squawk when Geralt hauls him into a rough embrace.

“Geralt? This is… new. Not that I’m _complaining_ , mind you--”

“Shut up,” and Jaskier, for once, shuts up and lets Geralt hold him close, closer. _I won’t let you go. Not now. Not yet._ It’s a new thought, but not a surprising one. Jaskier belongs by his side, now and forever. As long a forever as he can have. “This,” he says, and Jaskier nods. They both know what he’s talking about. “It’s called a _geas_. A fated end. There’s no cure.” He breathes. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Stay with me,” he says, and Jaskier nods.

“As long as you’ll have me.”

Geralt cuts his coast run short that year and leaves the north to Lambert and Coën in favor of taking Jaskier as far away from the sea as he can. It may not be wise, but it’s the only thing he can do, try to break the pull with distance, buy themselves a little more time.

A little more...

* * *

The longer he’s away from the water, the more Jaskier returns to normal, laughing, talking, sleeping like the dead and complaining when Geralt wakes him in the morning. Even his skin returns to its normal color, no longer moon-pale and silver-shadowed in the frail hollows of his throat. He’s _Jaskier_ again, not the half-there wraith he’d been for so many days, and something eases in Geralt’s chest again. It’s almost like it was.

Almost.

There’s still that haunted shadow behind his eyes, gleaming when he looks up at the sky. He doesn’t sleep on full moon nights, just sits and plays and plays until his callouses are worn raw and his fingers are pink and red. The music, too, isn’t his usual fare, but something softly melancholic, with a riptide sweep to it, pulling you out to sea.

It’s _beautiful,_ enough that even Geralt notices, and it makes something tug at his chest, longing and heartache and some strange wild longing, but it’s…

Jaskier was ever the buttercup of his name, brilliant and golden-hearted and bright, as tenacious as a dandelion, sinking his roots into his place at Geralt’s side and holding fast, no matter how many times he tried to pull the bard up.

Now he’s a wraith, starlight-washed and shadow-slipping, and Geralt finds himself making room by his side for him, because to set him adrift would be to ensure his death.

Jaskier laughs it off when Geralt untangles his tongue enough to ask how he’s doing, if there’s anything he can do to… _help_ , proclaims it the curse of being a poet, that the melancholy makes for the most beautiful songs, and he’s not wrong. His music is more now than it ever was before, a spill from his lute and throat and heart that catches at Geralt’s breastbone like a caged bird.

Still.

It hurts, to know what he was before.

* * *

They part for the winter in Rivia, Jaskier off to his latest patron of the arts, Geralt for Kaer Morhen. The stones of the keep breathe bitter cold into the halls and Geralt feels it for the first time in a long time, a chill around his heart like cold fingers. Jaskier isn’t _here_ , isn’t safe within Geralt’s sight where he can keep him _alive_. 

Eskel and Lambert try to cheer him up, of course, with gwent and White Gull and training and the boyish antics they all get up to during the winter because there’s no one around to tell them no anymore, and sometimes it works. Sometimes. 

But his mind always returns to Jaskier, with his smile that no longer reaches the shadows behind his eyes, and his too-pale skin, and his fading, fading. Fading away. 

It’s a long wait for the passes to open, and Geralt leaves sooner than he probably should, worried and trying not to show it, a tethered sort of panic beating trapped in his throat. Jaskier was good, he’d been _good_ , he’d been happy and laughing and _alive,_ but Geralt has seen how quickly something like this can turn. He wanders the north, seeking out rumors of a brightly-dressed bard, a singer, a troubadour, _anyone_ that might be Jaskier safe and whole and waiting for him.

Funnily enough, it’s _Jaskier_ who finds _him_.

He’s met coming back from a contract by a figure in dark blue, worrying the silver ring on his hand until Geralt steps out of the woods, safe.

For a heartbeat, there’s barely leashed euphoria (he’s alive, he’s _alive_ ), and Geralt wants-- wants to pull him close and bury his nose in his throat and breathe in the salt-and-sunlight scent of him, here and real and this won’t be the year he has to walk the path alone, but--

Jaskier’s worse.

There’s a shadow behind his eyes like the hollows between waves, a birdlike flutter (frailty) to his hands that wasn’t there before, a sorrow to his voice that he fails to hide. He’s thinner, paler, eyes no longer blue but silver-grey, faded like old cloth left out in the sun too long. It lends him an odd beauty, like a flower plucked and left behind, a snowflake caught in the palm of your hand. Something ephemeral, frozen, already slipping away.

He feels the cold more, now, so Geralt pulls him into his own bedroll and holds him close, closer, like he can keep Jaskier tied to this world (to _him_ ) with the strength of his arms alone, like he can keep the part of him that’s wandering further and further away by sheer force of will.

Jaskier smiles at him when they’re like that, soft and sorrowful, and doesn’t sleep.

* * *

“Come to Kaer Morhen with me,” Geralt says, one cold night with Jaskier a frail weight against him, breathing out salt tears and bitterness and something in him pulling, pulling. He’s slipping away, no matter how Geralt tries to hold him, _geas_ drawing him ever to the ocean, inevitable as the tides. “Come to Kaer Morhen for the winter.” _Because I’m afraid you’ll die when I’m not there_ , he doesn’t say. _Because I don’t want you to leave me_. 

Jaskier nods, where once he would have said something flippant and laughing, and smiles. “I’d love to.” Even his voice rings like sorrow, the cold grey of deep water in the sound of it, the chill crash and fall of tides, but it’s not wholly there. He’s half-gone already, and Geralt strokes a hand through his hair. _Stay with me_. “Thank you.”

Geralt smiles at him, though it feels like his heart might crack in two, and pulls him closer, until Jaskier’s heart beats like a trapped bird against his chest. (He dreads the day it might go still.)

The trek up to Kaer Morhen is long and hard and cold, and Geralt bundles Jaskier in the warmest things he has, leads him on Roach for more and more of it, and still--

There are long hours when he finds himself urging Roach on because he’s still too tongue-tied to say the words to Jaskier himself, days he goes hungry himself just to try to get the bard to eat _something_ , nights he won’t sleep for fear he’ll wake alone.

When the guardhouse light comes into view through the murky mountain twilight, he breathes for the first time since the first snowfall and grips Jaskier’s hand. There’s an aching tension to it, like he’s trying not to pull away, to fling himself down the Trail and away, but as soon as his boots hit the stones of the courtyard, something in him eases, some iron-strong part of him giving way and he--

crumples.

Geralt catches him, pulls him close, feels the way his breathing shallows, his rabbit-fast heart slows, softens. _Fades_. His face is moon-pale, shadowed in the dips and hollows, his hair an inky black against it. “Jaskier,” he says, half-broken, because this can’t be, this _can’t_ , they can’t have gotten this far only for--

There’s a clatter of boots that he ignores -- Eskel, by the weight of it -- “ _Jaskier_ ,” and his voice is cracked clean in two--

Jaskier opens his eyes, and they’re the blue of still waters. “It’s alright. Geralt, I’m alright,” and Geralt pulls him closer like he can pull him back from whatever brink he’s standing on, whatever that damned ocean did to him. Eskel is hovering over his shoulder, and that’s Vesemir walking towards him, near-silent, so he picks Jaskier up like he’s a child and carries him into the shadowed keep.

* * *

“You know that boy’s not human, I take it?” Vesemir says as soon as Jaskier is safely settled into Geralt’s room, wrapped in furs and with a fire burning brilliant in the hearth.

Geralt looks up. “What?”

“He’s _not human_ ,” Vesemir says, slowly, and then-- “Geralt. You had to have known.”

“...I didn’t,” Geralt says, and sits down with a thump.

“Wasting disease like that, he has to be. Humans don’t get that.”

“I was told it was a _geas_.”

Vesemir nods, solemnly, and sits down across from him with the face on that’s meant Geralt’s about to get a lecture since he was about five. “You thought that a _full-blooded human_ would get bound up in a _geas_ strong enough to make him kill himself over it?” He rolls right over Geralt’s abrupt anger with all the skill of the teacher he was. “Because that’s what he’s doing. It’ll drive him to his death if you don’t figure out how to fulfill it. No _human_ has that,” and he looks down, sharp and disapproving. “For all our sakes, I hope you know him as well as you think you do, or else…” There’s no use specifying what _or else_ is. They both know.

Geralt nods, dips his head to the closest thing to a father he’s ever had, and walks upstairs to watch over Jaskier.

He tells him when he wakes; what Vesemir said, what it means, what it will end in. Jaskier takes it with the same calm patience he’s cultivated over the past year and a half, and leans into Geralt’s chest when all’s said and done. 

_Not human_.

It could have meant a lifetime together, if they were lucky. Decades longer than a human might live, and no worry about Jaskier getting old or sick or too frail to walk the Path.

If they were lucky.

They weren’t.

* * *

Jaskier settles, some, into the cold stone and high walls and the endless fall of the mountains, the river running white and blue beneath them. He no longer seems half-there, caught between Geralt’s arms and the pull of the sea, like there’s something tethering him down, to the roots of the mountains that have held Geralt’s heart since he was a child, the snows and the skies and the endless sweep of air, but he’s still silvered around the edges, starlight-pale and shadowed, breathing the cold weight of the ocean into the air of the keep. He spends most of his time looking out over the valley, hands pressed to the freezing stone as though he doesn’t feel the cold. Geralt watches over him when he can, pulls him close and closer during the night, breathes in the saltwater scent of him and thinks _not yet. Not yet._

_Not yet._

“Old sea keep,” Jaskier says to him one day, when they’re both standing on the top of the highest tower, watching the clouds run races with each other to the horizon, shadows chasing each other over the peaks. 

“Hm?”

“Kaer a’Muirehen. Vesemir told me it means Old Sea Keep in an old dialect of Elder.”

“Yeah. We used to find stone clamshells in the valleys when we were boys.”

“She was here,” Jaskier says, and rests his hands on the frozen stone of the parapet, head lifting like it did that first summer, like he can hear the curl and crash of waves and the seabirds cry across the gulf of time. “Aeons ago. She was here.”

He means the sea. He _always_ means the sea. What _is_ he, that he’s bound so to its waters?

 _Not human, not human_.

 _Not_ **_yours_** **.**

“I think that’s why I like it here,” Jaskier continues. “It feels like home.”

“It could _be_ home,” Geralt says on impulse, too-loud in the winter quiet, but Jaskier tips his head up to look at him and his eyes are the color of the little laughing wavelets that run off the prows of ships, silver-blue and green.

“Really?”

“If you wanted it to be,” Geralt says, leaning against the freezing-cold parapet and immediately regretting it.

“I… thank you, Geralt,” Jaskier says, but the sorrow in his eyes is back, and stronger than ever, and he smells like bitter salt and cold water. The scent is different from that of the mountains, the bright clear scent of fresh-fallen snow and the metallic ring of rock. No, Jaskier smells of old water, of depthless, endless, uncaring waters, something unknowable and older, even, than the mountains where they stand. Something Geralt can never be, can never _have_. 

_Not yours_.

 _Come back_ , Geralt wants to say. _Come back to me. Don’t go yet_ , but his tongue is as tangled as ever, the words caught in his throat, so he rests a hand on Jaskier’s shoulder instead, but there’s a flying-bird tension to it, like Geralt could let go and he’d wisp away into nothingness with the breeze that plays merry havoc with their cloaks. Like Geralt’s the only thing holding him down.

Jaskier just smiles, but there’s no mirth to it, and turns to watch the shadows run.

* * *

The world turns and the days lengthen and the snow runs in melting rivulets down the hills, turning the Gwenllech to a white froth that roars gleefully down the mountain, power and rage and drowning-deep waters, and still Geralt stays. Jaskier is still _his_ , here, where the old waters flowed, where the mountains hold him to the ground. But Eskel is gone, and Lambert is _long_ gone, and Vesemir is making noises about leaving, and the _geas_ can only be held for so long, Jaskier’s -- and his own. Because his fate is the Path, nothing more, nothing less, no matter how much he wishes it wasn’t. 

The trek down the mountain is just as long as the way up, moreso. Every step Jaskier takes is a struggle, but there’s something iron-strong to his spine, now, that keeps him by Geralt’s side through the narrow paths and steep cliffs and capricious spring weather, into the high plains of Kaedwen. The rivers seem to ease something in him, at least, and he spends a day simply sitting by the calm rush of the lower Gwenllech while Geralt lays out bait for waterwalkers, plucking on his lute and humming something, softly.

_Every river running, running…_

When the bait is set and the traps are laid and there’s nothing more to do but wait, Geralt settles next to him and listens as he breathes slow music, no words as of yet, just aching melodies, fragments of poetry. There’s nothing of the sea in them, just sorrow, settling like fog into their bones and breath. 

He doesn’t have long, now. Geralt knows this. _Geasa_ are strong, stronger than curses, stronger than spellwork, unbreakable. _An end you cannot escape, a destiny, a fate._ They can be laid on humans, though those rarely end in death, simply torment. But Jaskier isn’t human, at least not entirely, and his destiny is bound in bone and blood. It may be fulfillable, it may not be. It may simply be for Jaskier to pine away until he dies of a broken heart. Two years is a long time to last under something that strong, but he can’t last forever.

_Not yet. Please, not yet._

“We could go to the coast,” Jaskier says, one full-moon night on the banks of the Pontar. Those are the worst, when the restlessness in him turns to _yearning_ , when the pull of the tides is strongest, when he doesn’t eat and doesn’t sleep and barely touches his lute, every inch of him pulling, _pulling_ , for something he can’t have. “Get away for a while.”

So this is it. The end of… whatever this is between them. The end of _Jaskier_.

Still.

He can’t deny him this, not now. Not with Jaskier starlight-pale in his arms, with eyes the color of moonlight on snow. One last wish, before he--

dies.

“Alright. We’ll go,” and Jaskier tries to smile up at him but doesn’t quite make it and falls back into silver-and-shadow again, frail-boned as a bird. 

He knows, too.

* * *

They make it to the Keracki coast by the end of summer, the leaves not quite ready to turn but the chill winds of autumn already turning the water grey. Geralt hasn’t been back to the coast in two years, not since it happened, and he’s… surprised by the sudden swell of hate he feels when he sees the broad expanse, the sweeping horizon, the fathomless shifting blues.

Jaskier stays by his side as they make their way north, Geralt not bothering to take any contracts, just… existing. They squat in a little stone cottage for a week or two, then wander on, as the fine sand beaches of southern Kerack turn to the rocky cliffs and storm-tossed waters of the north. It’s beautiful, in the same wild way that Jaskier is now, unpredictable and endless and terribly, terribly sad. The sea breathes salt and sorrow into the air and the cliffs sing it back out like a hollow drum, the winds wailing an endless descant over the tops of the trees.

Geralt tips his face into the rain, when it rains, and breathes the wild air and misses Jaskier already. He’s not eating, he’s not sleeping, he barely drinks anything, and only when Geralt presses. He burns with something luminous and consuming, a wild sort of joy that can turn to rage turn to sorrow turn to weeping, _aching_ grief in a heartbeat. Geralt will wake to find him crying of a new moon night, or singing wordless out over the waters, his lute all but forgotten. It’s all a reminder that they only have so much time left.

* * *

“My mother was from here,” Jaskier says, one cold morning. They’ve settled into a cave at the very northernmost part of Kerack, Jaskier too weak to travel much further. It’s cold and it’s damp and the rocks echo with the sound of the waves loud enough to keep Geralt up at night, but Jaskier breathes easier, here, and Geralt will suffer anything, _anything_ , to keep him safe and by his side just that little bit longer.

It’s the only thing he’s said all day, and Geralt never thought he could hate silence but this one, _this_ one, this melting-snow-and-wilting-flowers silence like the cold heart of winter, he hates with every bone in his body. “My father found her in that town right over there,” and he points to the south, to the last town they passed through, called Caoineadh na Mara. Something _Sea_ , in the old Skelligan style.

“I thought you were Redanian,” Geralt says, and Jaskier looks up at him.

“My father was. Mother was Keracki, died when I was a baby. _Father’s_ as human as they come, so I suppose she’s…”

“Yeah,” Geralt says, rough and bitter, and they say no more about it.

That night is a full moon, one Geralt’s been dreading, with the kind of gut-deep pulling _no no no no no_ that he’s only felt walking into his first contract, and he holds Jaskier close as it rises, breathing in the salt-and-starlight scent of him even as the pull in his blood strengthens and Jaskier tears himself free, pacing twice before the fire flickering on the damp ground of the cave and then disappearing into the night over the sharp rocks of the strand. His footsteps pick up speed until he’s moving at a dead run into the distance, the scent of blood from his bare feet staining the ground.

Geralt’s medallion begins to hum.

 _No_.

He lunges to his feet, fingers scrabbling for his silver sword, and sets off, mind flickering through the possibilities. Is it sirens? Ekhidnas? Something _worse_ ? He hurtles headlong along the beach, rocks slipping and turning under him, footsteps loud and careless-- not yet not yet not _yet_ \--

He bursts out onto the silver-white clarity of the strand, Jaskier’s blooded footprints gleaming silver-black in the moonlight. The waves slam and crash into the rocks with hollow _booms_ , ringing like bells, throwing up sprays of foam like ladies’ fans, gleaming like diamonds, like fallen stars.

Jaskier stands in the center of it, barefoot, alight, gleaming silver and shadow before that great rushing expanse, and there is someone facing him, nearly a mirror of his own paleness, the fine-boned lines of his face She’s wrapped in silver shining like starlight, dappled with shadow like the endless deeps. Her hair is a night-black spill over her shoulders, her body wrapped only in a cloak that is sometimes moonlight and sometimes sunlight and sometimes the surface and sometimes the deep and all of the times all of those things but _mostly_ , what it looks like, is sealskin.

A selkie.

She’s standing, frozen, on the curling edge of the water, the waves lapping over her toes, and he can see her face from here in the too-bright night -- moonlight-pale, midnight-dark, with eyes like the sea in storm, and she’s staring at Jaskier like he’s brought the end of the world.

Somehow, coming any closer feels like intruding.

She lifts one long-fingered hand to his face, luminous under the moon, and cradles his jaw, gentle as anything. The raw bones of Jaskier’s face look more and more like death the longer he compares the two, still beautiful but like plucked flowers, like melting snow.

They breathe.

“You’re Muireann’s boy, aren’t you,” she says, and her voice is the curl and crash of a summer storm, music-sweet and wind-wild, and he can _hear_ the power in it, the grace and beauty and _mystery_ that has called so many men to fall in love with _maighdeann-mara_ , the seal-maidens, the heart of the ocean itself.

And she knows _Jaskier_. 

Geralt takes a careless step forward, because how-- how is this _possible_ \-- and his foot clatters against a loose rock, sending it rattling away, and he curses his own overeager clumsiness. Her head comes up, stormy eyes wide, and suddenly there’s nothing but a silver shadow racing away under the waves.

A _selkie_.

He runs to Jaskier then, standing trembling on bloody feet, and he looks up at Geralt, suddenly seeming far more frail than he was before. “My… She knew my _mother_ , Geralt. How did she know my mother?”

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

How did he not see it before? The sea-call, the nonhuman blood, the fucking _full moon_. He got too caught up in getting ready for Jaskier to die, rather than actually trying to put the pieces together like she should, like he was fucking _trained_ to do. He wants to punch something, stab something, go find a monster nest of some sort and hack it to shreds with his sword because if he’d thought, if he’d only fucking _thought_ , they could have fucking _fixed this_ before it ever got this bad--

“Come on.”

“What?” and _oh_ , that sounds enough like the old Jaskier to make his heart _ache_.

“We need to go back.” He needs to _fix this_.

“What? Geralt, _what’s going on_? First that… that _woman_ knew my _mother_ , who has been dead for _twenty-three years_ , and now you’re acting like you do when someone’s called me, I don’t know, your _whore_ or something and you _really_ want to go kill something--”

“You’re a selkie.” Geralt cuts him off, sharp, and hooks a hand around his bicep to tug him forward, back to the cave.

“ _What_.”

“I’ll explain on the way.” He glances at Jaskier’s feet, decides it would hurt him too much to walk like this, sweeps him up into his arms (he weighs _nothing_ ), and sets off for camp and Roach and what passes for safety in this life they lead.

* * *

“I’m a _what_.” Jaskier says, flat, and Geralt looks up at him from across the fire.

“A selkie. A sea-maiden.”

“Do I happen to _look_ like a maiden to you?”

“There are men, too. People just don’t write songs about them.”

“I’m sorry, since _when_ do you care about music?”

“Not music,” Geralt says, and then struggles to wrap his tongue around the explanation. “Legends. There’s not a lot of lore on them; they don’t hurt humans, and most of the stories they used to tell were lost when Skellige started speaking Common, but there’s a couple of songs that were translated.”

“What, like _The Sea-Queen’s Daught_ \-- oh _fuck_.”

Geralt grins, sharp and bitter. It’s the most famous of the selkie ballads, the story of a seal-maiden who fell in love with a human man who stole her sealskin cloak and trapped her on the land to die, lamenting her folly to her mother on the waters until she died of a broken heart.

Jaskier stutters, trips over his own tongue, blinks, and then says again, softer, “Oh _fuck_. I’m a selkie.”

“You’re a selkie.”

“And I-- I’ve been _pining away for the ocean_ this entire time? Fucking _dying_ of it?”

“It’s in your blood. You’re… bound, blood and bone and soul, to the ocean. Forever.”

“Oh well that’s just great, thank you _so_ much for figuring this out when I’m _already dying_.”

“You’ll make it.” _He has to make it._

Jaskier sighs and doesn’t say anything else, looking down at his hands, all thin bones and pale skin, no longer his strongly-muscled and graceful musician’s hands. He barely plays the lute anymore, too caught up in the pain of his _geas_ , and Geralt would give almost anything to hear him play again, which is a sentiment he never fucking _thought_ he’d have but. Well. Here they are. 

Geralt steps around the fire to settle next to him, allowing Jaskier to nestle into the warmth of his chest, and breathes in the salt-spray and wind and bitter starvation-scent of him. He’s dying, really and truly now, body failing even as Geralt watches, and he wraps an arm around the bard and pulls him close, closer, until he can feel his heart like a trapped bird in his chest.

 _I have to fix this_.

* * *

It’s another day, another night where Geralt can’t sleep, _won’t_ sleep, because if he wakes alone he’ll never forgive himself and Jaskier fades even more, before he figures out what to _do_. Jaskier’s mother must have been a selkie, her cloak stolen by his father, and he inherited it. He just needs to find Jaskier’s sealskin cloak, and he can _fix this_.

Geralt very deliberately doesn’t think about what finding Jaskier’s cloak might _mean_. For Jaskier, for _him,_ for whatever it is that’s been tentatively forming between them the past two years that he can’t put a name to yet but that keeps him pulling Jaskier close, closer, and praying to whatever gods might listen to a witcher that he lives through the night.

Jaskier’s father turns out to be the fucking _Count de Lettenhove_ , of all people. Jaskier himself is too weak to travel, so Geralt wraps him in what furs and blankets he can spare and sets off for Redania through the cooling autumn at a gallop, hoping against hope that this will _work._

He gets waved through the gate by a bored guard the instant he pulls out a silver ring that Jaskier gave him, his signet that the bard’s never worn. The house itself is tall and grand, with a massive lake just out front that reflects the sky. It’s expensive, clearly, and well-tended, but it’s nothing compared to the wild majesty of the sea. What a fall this must have been for Muireann, trapped in a mansion with a pond where her ocean had been and a human man holding her captive.

Geralt rolls his shoulders, testing the give of his sword in its sheath. He’ll do _whatever he has to_ to save Jaskier, now, and if that means threatening the Count of Lettenhove at swordpoint, then that’s what’s going to happen.

The door guard looks at him dubiously, but lets them through when Geralt waves his ring in his face, and Geralt follows him down the long hallway and up the stairs. The house is so empty it _echoes_ , built for a family far larger than a lord and his heir.

Lord Lettenhove is in a large, empty dining room, eating a luncheon for one, and he startles to his feet when Geralt shoulders the door open. “Guards--”

“Lord Pankratz,” Geralt says, and steps in.

“ _No_.” He recognizes Geralt, of course he does. Jaskier’s songs are famous across the continent now, the White Wolf practically a folk hero.

“Did you know?” Geralt asks. “Of course you knew. You stole her cloak and killed her.”

“No, I... I swear, I didn’t!”

“Liar,” Geralt says conversationally. “Where is it.” They both know what he’s talking about. Jaskier’s cloak of sealskin. The thing that will save his life.

“You won’t be able to use it!” Lord Pankratz says (squeaks, rather). 

“You took it,” Geralt says, because that’s how the legend goes. “Took it, and hid it, and _kept it from him_.” There’s a snarl in his voice, deep and sword-sharp, because _Jaskier is dying because of this man’s idiocy_. “You killed your wife, and now you’re going to kill your son, too.”

“Her things,” the count says, abruptly defeated. “I didn’t… take it. Not his. She died before she could finish it.” He swallows. “Check the attic. Brown trunk with the brass lock.”

Geralt turns to leave.

“I loved her, you know,” the count says. “I really did.”

“You locked her in a gilded cage and kept her there until she died,” Geralt replies. “That’s not love.” He shuts the door tightly behind him and seals it with yrden -- he’s not letting the count flee.

It’s not hard to find the attic -- any servant he asks is more than willing to simply point him in the right direction; out of fear or respect, he doesn’t know or care which. The trunk is even easier to find -- even after all these years, it still smells like the sea. He picks the lock with ease, brushes back the fine cloth wrapping, picks through it. It feels like the box is full of… memories, a lock of night-black hair that smells of milk and the ocean and _Jaskier_ , a fine green silk gown that flows like water, silver jewelry, a stack of letters. A box.

He slides the rusted clasp on it, opens the lid, sweeps back the silk wrapping--

It looks like she folded a piece of the ocean into a plain wooden box, green-and-blue-and-fathomless-deeps, silver and shadow and gleaming moonlight, running like water, sweeping like waves, and looking most of all like _sealskin_. It’s old magics, older than the crafted Chaos of the Continent’s mages, older than the careful formulae of witchers’ alchemy, older, even, than the Art of the elves. Old magic, water magic, woven of sunlight and sealfur and a mother’s love, threads plucked from nothingness to make them more than what they are.

He picks it up, carefully, and it runs like the cool kiss of the waves over his hands, the chill of the deeps and the crash of spray and the soft brush of sealfur and--

And the edge is ragged, frayed, unfinished, and the threads are slipping, slipping, moonlight and starlight and seaspray falling to fragments even as he watches, until the whole thing is nothing but a pile of glimmering dust. 

No.

_No._

no

* * *

His sword hilt is a comforting weight in his hand. This is what he was trained for, this is what he has done all eighty years of his life, and he knocks in the dining room door with a well placed shove of his shoulder. 

Lord Pankratz is sitting at the edge of the table, his head in his hands, and he smells of the salt-and-bitter of tears. “You won’t find it,” he says. “She died long ago. It’ll have rotted away to dust.”

 _No_.

“Her cloak. Where is it?”

“It’s _gone_ ,” he says, sharp and bitter. “She’s dead, and he’ll die too, and I--” Geralt cuts him off, sharp, no time to think about what happens if he’s _right_ , if there really is no trace of her cloak left.

“Muireann’s cloak. Where did you hide it?”

“Does it matter? If there’s even anything left, he won’t live to see it, not if he’s not strong enough to come with you.” He laughs, bitter. “You think I couldn’t tell? Everyone knows he’s in love with you. With _you_ . A _witcher_. And you come storming in here, threatening my life to save his, no doubt.”

“ _Tell me_.” The count looks up with bleary eyes. “Tell me, or I run you through right now and you can die with the rest of your family.”

The old count sighs and drops his head again. “Ah, what’s the use. No harm in the telling, and maybe he’ll live.” He straightens and for a moment Geralt can see the proud man he once was, the sharp lines of his face that Jaskier inherited, the man that Muireann could have fallen in love with, buried under years of grief and too much wine to numb the pain. “Under the old willow, where I met her. Buried three paces from the root with a bear’s head on it. I always meant to go back, you know, get it for her. Give it back. But--”

“Shut up,” Geralt says, and leaves.

It’s back in Caoineadh na Mara, another week’s ride, and Jaskier dying all the while.

 _No choice_.

He mounts Roach and sets her to a gallop for the coast.

* * *

It’s the start of winter proper now, and the wind blows cold over the land. No snow, not yet, but it’ll be here soon and he can’t risk that, the cold that will sap Jaskier’s strength even more where he lies in his cave on the shore, the drifts that Roach will have to forge through to carry him back.

 _No_.

He pushes her to the limit, and beyond, and then when she can go no further he pays for as many days in the nearest stable as he can afford and forges on himself, near-running himself into the ground, eating while he walks, sleeping only when he can barely stand.

 _Stay with me_. _Just a little longer, Jaskier, please. Stay with me._

He finds Jaskier… not sleeping, not quite, but not awake either, almost in a trance, fingers reaching for the waves and eyes full of nothing but shadowed sorrow. But he’s alive, he’s _alive_ , and that’s all that truly matters.

The willow is clear from Caoineadh na Mara, older than half the buildings in the town and full of that same aching sorrow as Jaskier, the fronds catching and clinging at his armor with a sigh like the rush of waves on sand. The largest root has a protrusion that does indeed look like a bear head, and Geralt counts off three paces from the place where it disappears under the ground and begins to dig. The soil comes away clean in his hands, like a wrong being uncovered, and maybe that’s what this is.

There’s a bundle, buried, wrapped in oilskin and tied with an intricate Skelligan knot that he doesn’t bother picking apart, just rips open with his belt knife and tears the oilskin away to reveal--

It doesn’t look like much of anything. An old, dirty sealskin, half-rotted, full of holes.

Broken.

Dead.

It’s also the last chance he has.

He picks it up, carefully, half-expecting it to fall to pieces in his hands, wraps it carefully in his cloak, and runs for Jaskier. The sun is setting, now, silver on the water, the round and rising moon sending a glimmering line of light across the waves, and he knows this is the last night he’ll have.

 _Last chance. Use it wisely_.

* * *

Jaskier is standing when he makes it to the cave again, leaning out over the crash of the waves, one foot already planted on the sharp rocks, the moonlight on the water a long path leading off to the horizon. Blood curls away from his feet, still broken open from the last time, but he doesn’t seem to care, just takes another step and another, the water rising, swirling around his feet. There’s no pulling him back, not now. Not this time

 _No_.

“Jaskier!” 

He doesn’t look back.

“Jaskier, _wait_! Please!”

Geralt slips and scrambles down the rough scree, sending pebbles bounding to the ground, slipping, scrambling, ruining his boots with seawater as he splashes through the shallows, reaching out for Jaskier, one last time.

The selkie turns.

He’s all wildness now, starlight and sea spray and silver-shadowed, moonlight-pale and midnight-dark with eyes like the sea in storm, and he doesn’t look like a starving man, half-dead, no, he looks like something not quite of this world. Ephemeral.

They face each other, the moon-path leading onwards into the depths, and it’s just like every other time Geralt has watched him across a campfire or tavern or even a bed they shared, and it’s-- not. This is more and less and the last, the _last._

Geralt knows that now

He holds out the ruined cloak, silently, and Jaskier picks it up, hands delicate, birdlike, the veins shining silver-bright underneath the skin, and the luminosity in him (moonfire, starshine, the glitter of sunlight on wave tips) glitters around them, and suddenly it’s not an old rotted sealskin but something _more_.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and catches at his wrist, the thin bones oh-so-breakable under his fingers, and-- he _could_. He could refuse to let go, could pull Jaskier back to the shore, wrap him in his cloak. He’d live, most likely, with the sealskin to keep the _geas_ at bay. Geralt could _keep_ him, safe at his side, forever.

But he’d always be full of that endless sorrow, as deep as the sea, and he wouldn’t truly be _Jaskier_ anymore.

There must be something he should say here, _something_ , but Jaskier is looking at him with sorrow in his smile and shadows behind his eyes and as much as Geralt wants him to stay he _can’t_ \--

“I love you,” he says instead, and lets go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!  
> The next chapter (the bit with the happy ending) will be posted tomorrow.


	2. If You Love Me Let Me Go

He stays in Caoineadh na Mara for nearly a month (the locals call it Coiney, a bastardization of the name that is nonetheless much easier to say), taking a siren contract or two and watching out over the water for a silver-slipping shadow under the waves, for a voice in the deeps, for something, _anything_ , that means Jaskier is still out there.

There’s nothing.

The locals look at him sidewise, and mutter to themselves _sea-called, selkie-lover, poor man, poor man_ , like he doesn’t fucking _know_ already. He ignores their whispers, the same way he’s ignored the cries of _witcher_ and _monster_ and _mutant_ **_freak_ ** all his life, but this is… harder, somehow.

Because it’s Jaskier.

He has the bard’s lute still on Roach’s saddle, safe in that stable he put her in before… Just before. He goes and fetches her, leaves her to graze as she will in the woods, and goes back to looking out over the ocean.

The moon wanes and the moon waxes and all of a sudden it’s the full moon again, sending a vivid shimmer over the water, a long path leading up to a rocky bluff. He wanders the beach that night, watching the spray like ladies’ fans, like diamonds, like fallen stars, like the sea in storm, and doesn’t bother to care when his boots get wet. The salt will ruin them, has already ruined them, but he doesn’t care. Can’t care.

 _I love you_.

Fuck. Why had he _said_ that? To a half-wild selkie, gone before he could close his mouth, bound up in sea-call and wave-song and probably already forgetting his life on the land--

_Every river running, running..._

There’s a voice, singing out over the waves, the sound carried by the water until it seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, all at once, and he knows that voice.

He splashes up out of the water and sets out across the rocks, heedless of how they slip and fall and tumble under his feet, because he _knows_ that voice.

He claws his way up a steep outcropping, ripping his fingertips bloody on the stone, scrambles onto the very tip of the pile of rocks, and looks--

It’s Jaskier.

Of course it’s Jaskier.

And it’s not-- not _him_. Not anymore.

Standing on the very tip of the promontory, wrapped in nothing but a sealskin cloak, is a selkie man, all moonlight-pale and midnight-dark with eyes like the sea in storm, and he’s _singing_.

_Every river running, running,_

_Runs into its end the same_

_Every silver song we’re humming_

_Takes us back from whence we came_.

It’s Jaskier’s voice and it’s not, full of the sweep of the sea and the crash of the waves and the _power_ that no human can ever hope to harness no matter how proud, the grace and beauty and mystery that has lured a thousand men to the shores for the dream of loving a daughter of the sea, and it hurts almost worse than if it hadn’t been Jaskier at all. Because it _is_ him and he’s not--

“ _Jaskier_ ,” Geralt says, too harsh for the beauty still ringing off the cliffs, and the selkie doesn’t look at him, doesn’t care about him, just smiles like a wild thing and steps over the edge of the cliff.

* * *

Geralt doesn’t make it to Kaer Morhen that year. He winters instead in the south, taking contracts where he can find them and wandering where he can’t.

He doesn’t even bother heading north, just settles himself firmly in the Tir Tochairs, squarely in the middle of Viper territory (but that’s just Serrit and Letho and Auckes now, as far as he knows) and as far away from Kaer Morhen and the ocean as he can get. He spends months hunting knockers and shaelmaars and arachasae, ghouls and nekkers and corpse-eaters, but not the waterwalkers that haunt the river, no drowners or ilyocoris or freshwater kelpies.

He’d rather not be reminded of what he lost.

Eskel comes and drags him back up to Kaer Morhen the next year, because _it’s not good for you to be alone, Geralt._ Maybe he’s right.

Geralt doesn’t care. 

That winter is cold and lonely and bitter. Lambert didn’t make it in time, so it’s just him and Eskel and Vesemir, rattling around in the empty halls like too few peas in a pod, and Geralt ends up meditating more than he has since he was a boy struggling to make sense of his new body after the Trials, just to make the time pass quicker. 

Unless he’s getting resoundingly drunk instead, that is.

“I loved him, you know,” he says to Eskel one night, when he’s had enough to make him say shit like that but not enough to make him not care enough to say it. “I _loved_ him.”

“I know,” Eskel says, significantly less drunk than he is, for some reason. “We all knew, Geralt, it was obvious. You nearly killed yourself and your horse trying to save his life.”

“I _told_ him,” Geralt says, petulant, and fumbles for the bottle. Eskel lets him. “I told him I loved him and he fucking _left_.”

Eskel makes a sympathetic noise. “Alright, Wolf, time for bed,” and Geralt lets himself be pulled up to his feet and to Eskel’s room, because he can’t sleep in his own anymore. Too many memories.

“I loved him,” he says, one last time, and then there’s the prickle of Eskel’s Axii along his skull and he sleeps.

Vesemir is sympathetic in his own way, as best he knows how -- sword drills so he doesn’t think about it, more chores than usual to distract him, but not nearly so harsh when he fails to live up to expectations, and most of all he’s _gentler_ than Geralt’s ever known the old Witcher to be.

“Boy meant something to you,” he says, when Geralt presses, begs him why, _why_ , in a fit of… something, rage or grief or maybe just the desire to feel _anything_ again.

“You always said witchers shouldn’t have connections like that.”

“I’m not going to say that when you’re grieving so hard after two years you can barely walk straight. Get your head on right and your feet back on the Path and maybe in twenty years I’ll say I told you so, but not right now.”

“...thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, you’re still sloppy on that back-and-back-over, so get your arse out there on the training fields and fix it or you’re on washing up duty for a week.”

“I’m already on washing-up duty.”

“Two weeks then.”

Geralt goes, and trains, and fixes it, and ends up splitting the washing-up with Eskel anyways, and it’s the most normal he’s felt in four years now.

He heads back out on the Path come spring, headed for Lyria, Rivia, Aedirn. They need witchers too, after all, and the coast and the ocean and wherever Jaskier is now are far, far away.

He spends a week or two in Mahakam, in the mines, helping to clear out the knockers and kobolds that keep sabotaging the production lines, hunts an alp in the mountains east of Aedirn, and tries to hide the way his heart breaks a little more every time he hears one of Jaskier’s songs sung in a tavern. Eventually he stops going to them altogether, because seeing whichever bard is there break out into a rousing rendition of _Toss a Coin_ the moment he enters is enough to make him want to stab someone. Preferably the bard. (Because they’re not Jaskier, they’re _never Jaskier_ , what right do they have to sing his songs when he’ll never sing them again--)

He checks in on the elves of Dol Blathanna when he passes by, to make sure they’re settling in well enough, and ignores the aching pain in his chest that comes with the memories of the place. _White Wolf_ , and _three words or less_ , and the way that Jaskier had looked at him after the whole mess like he hung the fucking moon. 

The elves are alive at least, with something resembling a crop growing in their mountain gardens and half a dozen sylvans teaching them the basics of farming in exchange for food and shelter from witchers and humans. Filavandrel is as polite as elven nobility ever is, but with a warmth to him that’s… surprising, to say the least.

They talk for a bit, about witcher’s work and the difficulties of starting a civilization over from scratch, and then--

“And how is your bard?” the elf king asks. “I trust my lute has served him well.”

Geralt chokes and snarls, forcing anger onto his face to hide the hot prickle behind his eyes.

Filavandrel, centuries old and wise enough in how _people_ work to see right through him, goes unexpectedly gentle. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. My sympathies for your loss.” Somehow, he manages to imbue the trite phrases with genuine warmth. Long practice, most likely.

Geralt manages a “Thanks,” because that’s what you say to stuff like that, even if it feels like choking up a knife, and clamps his teeth down around the broken sound that wants to come out. This is the first time he’s truly had to… had to _think_ about it, about what Jaskier meant to him, stone-cold sober and face to face with the weight of years of memories. Posada. The songs. Loving him, and loving him, and watching him die slowly, and watching him leave.

“I know you were close,” Filavandrel says, and then recoils back when Geralt bares his teeth at him. Close? There isn’t a word for what they were to each other, for the frail-boned weight of Jaskier against him, for _not yet, not yet._

For _I love you_.

Geralt walks away.

* * *

Autumn is chill and cold again, the leaves already the color of fire, and Geralt is finally making his way north again, back home. Kaer Morhen. Kaer a’Muirehen. Old Sea Keep, where his bed still smells like Jaskier after all these years and where he can never, never forget but maybe he can begin to remember, instead of running, running, from all of this.

He rides into a town so small it probably doesn’t even have a name, and if it does, only the mayor knows or cares. He negotiates a bed in the alderman’s house in exchange for killing whatever it is they’ve got in their forest, and trudges off to do the contract.

It’s a ghoul, one singular lonely ghoul, but it tackles him into a mudpit and dies nearly on top of him when he rams his sword through its guts, and he ends up walking back to the village in the orange-red light of the setting sun covered in mud and blood and _stinking_ of ghoul insides. He must look a right sight to the people of the town, but they don’t seem to particularly _care_ , which is… odd, to say the least, and then--

“Geralt!”

He knows that voice.

He _knows_ that voice.

It can’t--

The ghoul head drops from nerveless fingers to splatter on the ground and he pivots on his heel, searching, searching--

Jaskier is _right there_ , beside him, and Geralt dips his head down and kisses him, sharp and bruising and full of all the pain he’s been through for the past _three fucking years_ , kisses him like he’s wanted to for years, like he’s wanted to ever since Jaskier threw a punch at a man who called him _mutant_ ** _freak_** and got thrown out of a tavern for it, like he’s wanted to every night that he held Jaskier close and closer against the cold and the sorrow and the sea-call _geas_ but wouldn’t let himself think about.

Kisses him like _I love you_.

“Geralt, _mmf_ , _Geralt_ , as nice as this is you are _covered_ in… mud-- and-- other stuff -- is that _blood_? Please tell me that’s just blood -- and I would really rather give you a bath and then figure all this out _later_ \-- _there_ we go. Come along, dear heart, let’s see if we can’t talk the alderman into letting you use his tub, hmm?”

“How…?”

“ _Later_ ,” Jaskier says firmly, and takes the lead. He’s wearing a new doublet, this time, silver stitched with blue and black, and he’s paler, though not quite moonlight-luminous. He’s back to full health, as well, the broad expanse of his shoulders and the steady strength of his arms something Geralt had almost forgotten, before… Just before.

He _does_ manage to talk the alderman into giving Geralt a bath, mainly because he convinces him he won’t need to _heat_ it, and because Geralt is standing there being very big and very imposing and smelling thoroughly like ghoul guts, which rival… pretty much _anything_ for strength.

Geralt lets himself be led blindly to a screened bit of the yard, where the alderman’s wife and daughters are already filling up the tub, and starts stripping off his armor to clean later. Jaskier helps him, making a face at the stench and the feel of monster viscera under his fingers, but undoing the buckles with as much surety as he always has, and then the buttons after that, until Geralt is standing there naked before him.

“Come on, in the tub, Geralt,” Jaskier says, fondly exasperated, and Geralt goes, wrinkling his nose at the chill and heating the water with igni.

“Jaskier, _how_?”

Jaskier kneels beside him, until they’re face to face again, and his eyes are still the color of the sea in storm, wild and fathomless and _beautiful_. He’s beautiful.

“There’s a saying at Oxenfurt, you know. Well, not really a saying, more of a-- poetic trope, but it’s really quite popular--”

“Jaskier.”

He sighs, and rests a light hand on Geralt’s shoulder, long-fingered but no longer so breakably delicate. “If you love something, let it go. If it loves you back, it’ll return.”

There’s a long silence.

“You… returned.”

“I returned,” Jaskier says, and kisses him again, slow and sweet and sea-storm wild. “I returned.”

**Author's Note:**

> A note on magic: this _specific_ style of magic is based off of like... what I've seen of some forms of traditional Norse or Scottish/Irish faerie magic, where you pull "threads" from intangible things and weave them into something else, like a dress made of fire or whatever. So selkie cloaks in this aren't _technically_ sealskin, but rather a magical item with the _appearance_ of sealskin. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always, comments and kudos will be given a warm and loving home. If you have any... questions or whatever about the general world, hit me up in the comments; I'll see what I can do to clarify it.
> 
> Feel free to come visit me at my [Tumblr!](https://storm-and-starlight.tumblr.com/)


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